The Light Between Oceans

by M. L. Stedman

  any more.”

  “That man loves you, you know. That’s got to be worth something.”

  “But what about Lucy? She’s my daughter, Ralph.” She searched for a way to explain. “Can you imagine asking Hilda to give away one of her children?”

  “This isn’t giving away. This is giving back, Isabel.”

  “But wasn’t Lucy given to us? Isn’t that what God was asking of us?”

  “Maybe He was asking you to look after her. And you did. And maybe now He’s asking you to let someone else do that.” He puffed out a breath. “Hell, I’m not a priest. What do I know about God? But I do know that there’s a man about to give up everything—everything—to protect you. Do you think that’s right?”

  “But you saw what happened yesterday. You know how desperate Lucy is. She needs me, Ralph. How could I explain it to her? You can’t expect her to understand, not at her age.”

  “Sometimes life turns out hard, Isabel. Sometimes it just bites right through you. And sometimes, just when you think it’s done its worst, it comes back and takes another chunk.”

  “I thought it had done all it could to me, years ago.”

  “If you think things are bad now, they’ll be a whole lot worse if you don’t speak up for Tom. This is serious, Isabel. Lucy’s young. She’s got people who want to care for her, and give her a good life. Tom’s got no one. I never saw a man who less deserved to suffer than Tom Sherbourne.”

  Under the watchful gaze of saints and angels, Ralph continued, “God knows what got into the pair of you out there. There’s been lie upon lie, all with the best intentions. But it’s gone far enough. Everything you’ve done to help Lucy has hurt someone else. Good God, of course I understand how hard it must be for you. But that Spragg’s a nasty piece of work and I wouldn’t put anything past him. Tom’s your husband. For better or worse, in sickness and in health. Unless you want to see him in jail, or—” He couldn’t finish the sentence. “I reckon this is your last chance.”

  “Where are you going?” An hour later, Violet was alarmed at the state of her daughter. “You’ve only just walked in the door.”

  “I’m going out, Ma. There’s something I have to do.”

  “But it’s bucketing down. Wait till it stops, at least.” She gestured to a pile of clothes on the floor beside her. “I’ve decided to go through some of the boys’ things. Some of their old shirts, their boots: they might be some good to someone. I thought I could give them to the church.” A quiver crept into her voice. “But it would be nice to have some company while I sort them.”

  “I have to go to the police station, now.”

  “What on earth for?”

  Isabel looked at her mother, and for a moment almost dared tell her. But she said, “I need to see Mr. Knuckey.

  “I’ll be back later,” she called behind her, heading down the passageway to the front door.

  As she opened it, she was startled by a silhouette in the doorway, about to ring the bell. The figure, soaked with rain, was Hannah Roennfeldt. Isabel stood speechless.

  On the doorstep, Hannah spoke quickly, keeping her eyes on a bowl of roses on the table behind Isabel, fearing that to look at her directly would make her change her mind. “I’ve come to say something—just to say it and go. Don’t ask me anything, please.” She thought back to the vow she had made to God just hours ago: there was no reneging. She took a breath, like a run-up. “Anything could have happened to Grace last night. She was so desperate to see you. Thank God she was found before she came to any harm.” She looked up. “Can you have any idea what it feels like? To see the daughter you conceived and carried, the daughter you bore and nursed, call someone else her mother?” Her eyes darted to one side. “But I have to accept that, however much it hurts. And I can’t put my happiness above hers.

  “The baby I had—Grace—isn’t coming back. I can see that now. The plain fact is, she can live without me, even if I can’t live without her. I can’t punish her for what happened. And I can’t punish you for your husband’s decisions.”

  Isabel began to protest, but Hannah spoke over her. With her eyes fixed again on the roses, she said, “I knew Frank to his very soul. Perhaps I only ever knew Grace a very little.” She looked Isabel in the eye. “Grace loves you. Perhaps she belongs to you.” With great effort, she pushed on to her next words: “But I need to know that justice is done. If you swear to me now that this was all your husband’s doing—swear on your life—then I’ll let Grace come to live with you.”

  No conscious thought went through Isabel’s mind—it was by sheer reflex that she said, “I swear.”

  Hannah continued, “As long as you give evidence against that man, as soon as he’s safely locked away, Grace can come back to you.” Suddenly she was in tears. “Oh, God help me!” she said, and rushed away.

  Isabel is dazed. She runs over and over what she has just heard, wondering whether she has made it up. But there are the wet footprints on the veranda; the trail of drops from Hannah Roennfeldt’s furled umbrella.

  She looks through the fly-wire door so close up that the lightning seems to be divided into tiny squares. Then the thunder rolls in and shakes the roof.

  “I thought you were going to the police station?” The words crash into Isabel’s thoughts, and for a moment she has no idea where she is. She turns and notices her mother. “I thought you’d already gone. What happened?”

  “There’s lightning.”

  “At least Lucy won’t be frightened,” Isabel catches herself thinking as the sky cracks open with a brilliant flash. From when she was a baby, Tom has taught the girl to respect, but not fear, the forces of nature—the lightning that might strike the light tower on Janus, the oceans that batter the island. She thinks of the reverence Lucy showed in the lantern room: not touching the instruments, keeping her fingers off the glass. She recalls an image of the child in Tom’s arms, waving and laughing from up on the gallery to Isabel at the washing line on the ground. “Once upon a time there was a lighthouse…” How many of Lucy’s stories started that way? “And there did be a storm. And the wind blew and blew and the lightkeeper made the light shine, and Lucy did help him. And it was dark but the lightkeeper wasn’t scared because he had the magic light.”

  Lucy’s tortured face comes to her mind. She can keep her daughter, keep her safe and happy, and put all this behind them. She can love her and cherish her and watch her grow… In a few years, the tooth fairy will spirit away milk teeth for threepence, then gradually Lucy will get taller and together they will talk about the world and about—

  She can keep her daughter. If. Curled in a ball on her bed, she sobs, “I want my daughter. Oh, Lucy, I can’t bear it.”

  Hannah’s declaration. Ralph’s entreaty. Her own false oath, betraying Tom as surely as he ever betrayed her. Around and around like a merry-go-round of possibilities they whirl and jumble, pulling her with them, first in one direction, then another. She hears the words that have been spoken. But the one voice that is absent is Tom’s. The man who now stands between her and Lucy. Between Lucy and her mother.

  Unable to resist its call any longer, she edges to the drawer, and takes out the letter. She opens the envelope slowly.

  Izzy, love,

  I hope you’re all right, and keeping your strength up. I know your mum and dad will be taking good care of you. Sergeant Knuckey’s been good enough to let me write to you, but he’ll be reading this before you do. I wish we could talk face-to-face.

  I’m not sure if or when I’ll be able to speak to you again. You always imagine you’ll get the chance to say what needs to be said, to put things right. But that’s not always how it goes.

  I couldn’t go on the way things were—I couldn’t live with myself. I’m sorrier than I’ll ever be able to say for hurting you.

  We each get a little turn at life, and if this ends up being how my turn went, it will still have been worth it. My time should have been up years ago. To have met you, when I thought l
ife was over, and been loved by you—if I lived another hundred years I couldn’t ask for better than that. I’ve loved you as best as I know how, Izz, which isn’t saying much. You’re a wonderful girl, and you deserved someone a lot better than me.

  You’re angry and hurt and nothing makes sense, and I know what that feels like. If you decide to wash your hands of me, I won’t blame you.

  Perhaps when it comes to it, no one is just the worst thing they ever did. All I can do is to ask God, and to ask you, to forgive me for the harm I’ve caused. And to thank you for every day we spent together.

  Whatever you decide to do, I’ll accept it, and I’ll stand by your choice.

  I will always be your loving husband,

  Tom

  As though it is a picture, not a note, Isabel traces her fingertip over the letters, following the steady lean, the graceful loops—as though that is how to make sense of the words. She imagines his long fingers on the pencil as it traveled across the page. Over and over, she traces “Tom,” the word somehow both foreign and familiar. Her mind wanders to the game they would play, where she would draw letters with her finger on his naked back for him to guess, then he would do the same on hers. But the recollection is swiftly countered by the memory of Lucy’s touch. Her baby’s skin. She imagines Tom’s hand again, this time as it wrote the notes to Hannah. Like a pendulum, her thoughts swing back and forward, between hatred and regret, between the man and the child.

  She lifts her hand from the paper and reads the letter again, this time trying to make out the meaning of the words on the page, hearing Tom’s voice pronounce them. She reads it over and over, feeling as though her body is being rent in two, until finally, shaking with sobs, she makes her decision.

  CHAPTER 35

  When it rains in Partageuse, the clouds hurl down water and soak the town to its very bones. Millennia of such deluges have brought forth the forests from the ancient loam. The sky darkens and the temperature plummets. Great gulleys are carved across dirt roads, and flash floods make them impassable by motorcars. The rivers quicken, finally scenting the ocean from which they have so long been parted. They will not be stopped in their urgency to get back to it—to get home.

  The town goes quiet. The last few horses stand forlornly with their wagons as the rain drips off their blinkers, and bounces off the motorcars which far outnumber them these days. People stand under the wide verandas of shops in the main street, arms folded, mouths turned down in grimaces of defeat. At the back of the schoolyard, a couple of tearaways stamp their feet in puddles. Women look in exasperation at washing not retrieved from lines, and cats slink through the nearest convenient doorway, meowing their disdain. The water rushes down the war memorial, where the gold lettering is faded now. It springs off the church roof and, through the mouth of a gargoyle, onto the new grave of Frank Roennfeldt. The rain transforms the living and the dead without preference.

  “Lucy won’t be frightened.” The thought occurs in Tom’s mind, too. He recalls the feeling in his chest—that strange shiver of wonder for the little girl, when she would face down the lightning and laugh. “Make it go bang, Dadda!” she would cry, and wait for the thunder to roll in.

  “Bugger it!” exclaimed Vernon Knuckey. “We’ve sprung a bloody leak again.” The runoff from the hill above the station was rather more than a “leak.” Water was pouring into the back of the building, set lower than the front. Within hours, Tom’s cell was six inches deep in water, entering from above and below. The house spider had abandoned its web for somewhere safer.

  Knuckey appeared, keys in hand. “Your lucky day, Sherbourne.”

  Tom did not understand.

  “Usually happens when it rains this much. The ceiling in this part tends to collapse. Perth’s always saying they’re going to fix it, but they just send some cove to put a bit of flour and water glue on it, as far as I can see. Still, they get a bit dark with us if the prisoners cark it before trial. You’d better come up the front for a while. Till the cell drains.” He left the key unturned in the lock. “You’re not going to be stupid about this, are you?”

  Tom looked at him squarely, and said nothing.

  “All right. Out you come.”

  He followed Knuckey to the front office, where the sergeant put one handcuff on his wrist and another around an exposed pipe. “Not going to be flooded with customers as long as this holds out,” he said to Harry Garstone. He chuckled to himself at his pun. “Ah, Mo McCackie, eat your heart out.”

  There was no sound except the rain, thundering down, turning every surface into a drum or a cymbal. The wind had fled, and nothing outside moved except the water. Garstone set to with a mop and some towels, attempting to redeem the situation inside.

  Tom sat looking through the window at the road, imagining the view from the gallery at Janus now: the keeper would feel like he was in a cloud, with the sudden air inversion. He watched the hands on the clock inch their way around the dial as if there were all the time in the world.

  Something caught his attention. A small figure was making its way toward the station. No raincoat or umbrella, arms folded, and bent forward as though leaning on the rain. He recognized the outline instantly. Moments later, Isabel opened the door. She looked straight ahead as she made for the counter, where Harry Garstone had stripped to the waist and was busy trying to mop up a puddle.

  “I’ve…” Isabel began.

  Garstone turned to see who was speaking.

  “I’ve got to see Sergeant Knuckey…”

  The flustered constable, half-naked and mop in hand, blushed. His eyes flicked toward Tom. Isabel followed his gaze, and gasped.

  Tom jumped to his feet, but could not move from the wall. He reached a hand to her, as she searched his face, terrified.

  “Izzy! Izzy, love!” He strained at the handcuffs, stretching his arm to the very fingertips. She stood, crippled by fear and regret and shame, not daring to move. Suddenly, her terror got the better of her, and she turned to dash out again.

  It was as though Tom’s whole body had been brought back to life at the sight of her. The thought that she might vanish again was more than he could bear. He pulled again at the metal, this time with such force that he wrenched the pipe from the wall, sending water gushing high into the air.

  “Tom!” Isabel sobbed as he caught her in his arms, “Oh Tom!” her body shaking despite the strength of his hold. “I’ve got to tell them. I’ve got to—”

  “Shh, Izzy, shh, it’s all right, darl. It’s all right.”

  Sergeant Knuckey appeared from his office. “Garstone, what in the name of Christ—” He stopped at the sight of Isabel in Tom’s arms, the two of them soaking from the pipe’s downpour.

  “Mr. Knuckey, it’s not true—none of it’s true!” cried Isabel. “Frank Roennfeldt was dead when the boat washed up. It was my idea to keep Lucy. I stopped him reporting the boat. It’s my fault.”

  Tom was holding her tight, kissing the top of her head. “Shh, Izzy. Just leave things be.” He pulled away and held her shoulders as he bent his knees and looked straight into her eyes. “It’s all right, sweetheart. Don’t say any more.”

  Knuckey shook his head slowly.

  Garstone had hastily replaced his tunic and was smoothing his hair into some sort of order. “Shall I arrest her, sir?”

  “For once in your bloody life, show some sense, Constable. Get busy and fix the blinking pipe before we all drown!” Knuckey turned to the others, who were staring intently at one another, their silence a language in itself. “And as for you two, you’d better come into my office.”

  Shame. To her surprise, it was shame Hannah felt more than anger, when Sergeant Knuckey visited her with news of Isabel Sherbourne’s revelation. Her face burned as she thought back to her visit to Isabel just the previous day, and to the bargain she had struck.

  “When? When did she tell you this?” she asked.

  “Yesterday.”

  “What time yesterday?”

 
Knuckey was surprised by the question. What bloody difference could it make? “About five o’clock.”

  “So it was after…” Her voice died away.

  “After what?”

  Hannah blushed even deeper, humiliated at the thought that Isabel had refused her sacrifice, and disgusted at having been lied to. “Nothing.”

  “I thought you’d want to know.”

  “Of course. Of course…” She was concentrating not on the policeman, but on a windowpane. It needed cleaning. The whole house needed cleaning: she had hardly touched it for weeks. Her thoughts climbed this familiar trellis of housework, keeping her on safe territory, until she managed to haul them back. “So—where is she now?”

  “She’s on bail, at her parents’.”

  Hannah picked at a hangnail on her thumb. “What will happen to her?”

  “She’ll face trial alongside her husband.”

  “She was lying, all that time… She made me believe…” She shook her head, lost in another thought.

  Knuckey took a breath. “All a pretty rum business. A decent sort, Isabel Graysmark was, before she went to Janus. Being out on that island didn’t do her any good at all. Not sure it does anyone any good. After all, Sherbourne only got the posting because Trimble Docherty did away with himself.”

  Hannah wasn’t sure how to put her question. “How long will they go to prison for?”

  Knuckey looked at her. “The rest of their lives.”

  “The rest of their lives?”

  “I’m not talking about the jail time. Those two will never be free now. They’ll never get away from what’s happened.”

  “Neither will I, Sergeant.”

  Knuckey sized her up, and decided to take a chance. “Look, you don’t get a Military Cross for being a coward. And you don’t get a Bar to go with it unless—well, unless you saved a lot of your side’s lives by risking your own. Tom Sherbourne’s a decent man, I reckon. I’d go so far as to say a good man, Mrs. Roennfeldt. And Isabel’s a good girl. Three miscarriages she had out there, with no one to help her. You don’t go through the things those two have been through without being bent out of shape.”

  Hannah looked at him, her hands still, waiting to see where he was going.

  “It’s a God-awful shame to see a fellow like that in the position he’s in. Not to mention his wife.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m not saying anything that won’t occur to you in a few years’ time. But it’ll be too late by then.”

  She turned her head a fraction, as if to understand him better.

  “I’m just asking, is it really what you want? A trial? Prison? You’ve got your daughter back. There might be some other way…”

  “Some other way?”

  “Spragg’ll lose interest now that he’s had to drop his murder malarkey. As long as this is still a Partageuse matter, I’ve got some leeway. And maybe Captain Hasluck could be persuaded to put in a word for him with the Lights. If you were minded to speak up for him too. Ask for clemency…”

  Hannah’s face reddened again, and without warning she jumped to her feet. Words that had been building up for weeks, for years, words Hannah didn’t know were there, burst from her. “I’m sick of this! I’m sick of being pushed around, of having my life ruined by the whims of other people. You have no idea what it’s like to be in my position, Sergeant Knuckey! How dare you come into my house and make such a suggestion? How bloody dare you!”

  “I didn’t mean to—”

  “Let me finish! I’ve had enough, do you understand me?” Hannah was shouting now. “No one is ever going to tell me how to live my life again! First it’s my father telling me who I can marry, then it’s the whole bloody town turning on Frank like a mob of savages. Then Gwen tries to convince me to give Grace back to Isabel Graysmark, and I agree—I actually agree! Don’t look so shocked: you don’t know everything that goes on around here!

  “And it turns out the woman lied to my face! How dare you? How dare you presume to tell me, to even suggest to me, that I should, yet again, put someone else first!” She pulled herself up straight. “Get out of my house! Now! Just go! Before I”—she picked up the thing nearest to hand, a cut glass vase—“throw this at you!”

  Knuckey was too slow in getting to his feet and the vase caught him on the shoulder, ricocheting against the skirting board, where it smashed in a dazzle of shards.

  Hannah stopped, not sure whether she was imagining what she had done. She stared at him, waiting for a clue.

  He stood perfectly still. The curtain flapped with the breeze. A fat blowfly buzzed against the fly wire. A last fragment of glass gave a dull tinkle as it finally succumbed to gravity.

  After a long silence, Knuckey said, “Make you feel better?”

  Still Hannah’s mouth was open. She had never in her life hit anyone. She had rarely sworn. And she had definitely never done either to a police officer.

  “I’ve had a lot worse thrown at me.”

  Hannah looked at the floor. “I apologize.”